Post subject: Re: Is there any comprehensive Haswell Pentium review around

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2014 9:11 am

Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:23 amPosts: 98

I recently rebuilt a system using a Pentium G3420, which I got during the Christmas sale for about 50 euros, which is very cheap for a CPU. I coupled it with a single stick of DDR1600, the higher rate being the primary selling point of this chip over, say, the G3220.

I didn't do any measurements except to note that power consumption was between 40W idle and 80W at full blast at the wall, although I have to point out that the PSU is about ten years old, and I had a bunch of USB devices and a DVD drive connected.

Post subject: Re: Is there any comprehensive Haswell Pentium review around

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 11:17 am

Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:13 pmPosts: 147

bastiaan wrote:

I recently rebuilt a system using a Pentium G3420, which I got during the Christmas sale for about 50 euros, which is very cheap for a CPU. I coupled it with a single stick of DDR1600, the higher rate being the primary selling point of this chip over, say, the G3220.

You didn't make much use of the higher bandwidth possible if you only used one memory stick - two ddr3-1333 with a G3220 would offer a lot more bandwidth .In any case, neither ddr3-1333/1600 nor single/dual channel will matter much for the cpu, though single/dual channel probably does make some difference with the IGP (though it is only GT1, hence the difference will be nowhere as big as it would be with the GT2 parts).FWIW in that legitreviews review it looks like they were able to overclock the memory to ddr3-2133 even. Not sure why I thought that was locked down too, maybe the board can chose to ignore it or play some other tricks (my board definitely doesn't allow it with a G3220, the only faster option aside from ddr3-1333 is ddr3-1400).

Post subject: Re: Is there any comprehensive Haswell Pentium review around

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:03 pm

Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:23 amPosts: 98

mczak wrote:

bastiaan wrote:

I recently rebuilt a system using a Pentium G3420, which I got during the Christmas sale for about 50 euros, which is very cheap for a CPU. I coupled it with a single stick of DDR1600, the higher rate being the primary selling point of this chip over, say, the G3220.

You didn't make much use of the higher bandwidth possible if you only used one memory stick - two ddr3-1333 with a G3220 would offer a lot more bandwidth

At the time of purchase I researched the dual vs single channel question extensively, because at the time dual channel kits were being sold for a significantly higher price. I concluded that the expected performance increase (on the high-end reference platforms typically used for testing) was too small to justify the higher price, particularly because the computer was unlikely to ever be used for anything where the difference might be noticeable to the user.

Post subject: Re: Is there any comprehensive Haswell Pentium review around

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:42 pm

Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:13 pmPosts: 147

bastiaan wrote:

mczak wrote:

bastiaan wrote:

I recently rebuilt a system using a Pentium G3420, which I got during the Christmas sale for about 50 euros, which is very cheap for a CPU. I coupled it with a single stick of DDR1600, the higher rate being the primary selling point of this chip over, say, the G3220.

You didn't make much use of the higher bandwidth possible if you only used one memory stick - two ddr3-1333 with a G3220 would offer a lot more bandwidth

At the time of purchase I researched the dual vs single channel question extensively, because at the time dual channel kits were being sold for a significantly higher price. I concluded that the expected performance increase (on the high-end reference platforms typically used for testing) was too small to justify the higher price, particularly because the computer was unlikely to ever be used for anything where the difference might be noticeable to the user.

I don't disagree with that, simply saying if you think the higher supported memory speed is the main selling point this chip has over the G3220, you could invest the price difference into a dual channel kit instead, since no matter how small or large the difference between single and dual channel memory is going to be, that difference is going to be roughly 3 times as large as the difference between single-channel ddr3-1333 and single-channel ddr3-1600. Though I guess it's possible depending on the amount of memory you wanted the price difference didn't really work out...

There's much better comparisons out there, in particular I'd be a lot more interested if they didn't overclock (memory but also cpu) that much if you'd want to get some at least halfway comparable results to the pentium (also, the chip has twice the amount of cores, so it's likely the difference with the pentium is smaller still). Personally, I'd actually be more interested in the IGP results single-channel vs. dual-channel (as I use that with the Pentium), they could be quite different.

Post subject: Re: Is there any comprehensive Haswell Pentium review around

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 12:52 pm

Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:23 amPosts: 98

mczak wrote:

I don't disagree with that, simply saying if you think the higher supported memory speed is the main selling point this chip has over the G3220, you could invest the price difference into a dual channel kit instead

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